Not, however, any other monograph on the concept of the minor character.Īfter writing about some secondary characters (Sirius Black in Harry Potter, Anabella Wilmott in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), I have come to the conclusion that quite often the conceptual centre of fiction can be found in their characterization. I have found books on secondary characters in specific authors (for instance, Wisdom of Eccentric Old Men: A Study of Type and Secondary Character in Galdós’s Social Novels, 1870-1897 by Peter Anthony Bly of 2004) and a volume studying how secondary characters have become protagonists in, for instance, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea ( Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace by Jeremy Rosen of 2016). the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel (2003) is the only book attempting to theorize the secondary character (note that he calls them ‘minor’).

NOTE: This post was originally written on 13 Decemeber 2021, but it’s published now, months later because of the cyberattack that UAB suffered then and that caused the temporary suspension of this blogĪs far as I know, Alex Woloch’s The One Vs.

Is mercutio a round or flat character